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Vintage Treasures: The Beast Master and Lord of Thunder by Andre Norton

Vintage Treasures: The Beast Master and Lord of Thunder by Andre Norton

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Andre Norton Beast Master hardcover-small The Beast Maser Ace Double-small The Beast Master Ace-small

Andre Norton’s The Beast Master is one of the most famous Ace Doubles ever published.

It was also one of her most popular books. It was originally published in 1959, and it’s still in print today, 55 years later. To give you some understanding of how amazing that is, try and find a paperback from, oh, 2010 at your local Barnes & Noble. (It’s not easy — 98% of fiction paperbacks four years old are out of print already.) Ladies and gentlemen, that’s literary staying power.

The Beast Master has been reprinted in a number of handsome editions over the last five decades, with covers by Richard Powers, Ed Valigursky, John Schoenherr, Ken Barr, Julie Bell, and many other talented folks. If you’re a struggling midlist writer, that’s one more reason to be jealous of Andre Norton. She was covered by the best.

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Future Treasures: The Baen Big Book of Monsters, edited by Hank Davis

Future Treasures: The Baen Big Book of Monsters, edited by Hank Davis

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The Baen Big Book of Monsters-smallMonsters!! And lots of ’em.

That’s all you need to know. Big monster book comin’. A Halloween-themed monster anthology, with a tantalizing a mix of classic reprints and original stories, all featuring REALLY BIG MONSTERS. Contributors include names that will be very familiar to Black Gate readers, such as Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, William Hope Hodgson, Murray Leinster, James H. Schmitz, Arthur C. Clarke, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, David Drake, and many more.

It even includes the pulp classic “The Monster-God of Mamurth” by Edmond Hamilton. And Harlan Ellison told us that story sucked when we wanted to reprint it. What does he know?

I approve of this Hank Davis fellow. His last anthology for Baen was the awesome In Space No One Can Hear You Scream, released last Halloween. This man is doing God’s work. Next time you run into him tell him he is blessed, and we’ll be rubbing elbows with the saints in the line to buy his book.

Here’s the book description, and the complete Table of Contents.

SIZE MATTERS

From the dragons of legend to Jack the Giant Killer’s colleague to King Kong and Godzilla, people have found the idea of giant creatures both scary and fascinating. Why so many should find accounts of a critter big enough to gulp down a puny human like an insignificantly small hor d’oeuvre or step on said human and leave a grease spot might be explained by the psychologists, but such yarns are undeniable fun.

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New Treasures: The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett

New Treasures: The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett

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The Company Man-smallYes, I’m late to the party with The Company Man. Yes, it came out three years ago. And yes, here I am trying to pull a fast one and sneak it in as a “New Treasure.” Work with me here; it’s been a long week.

Basically, I decided it’s time to pay attention to this Robert Jackson Bennett fellow. He made a considerable splash with his debut novel, Mr. Shivers (2010), and since then he’s put out a book a year: The Company Man (2011), The Troupe (2012), and American Elsewhere (2013). His latest, City of Stairs, which Tor.com described this morning as “an atmospheric and intrigue-filled novel of dead gods, buried histories, and a mysterious, protean city,” goes on sale next week. The Company Man looks like a very dark alternate history that combines gumshoe pulp fiction with a steampunk setting. I bought a copy last week, and it shot immediately to the top of my TBR pile.

The year is 1919.

The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built the guns that won the Great War before it even began. They built the airships that tie the world together. And, above all, they built Evesden – a shining metropolis, the best that the world has to offer.

But something is rotten at the heart of the city. Deep underground, a trolley car pulls into a station with eleven dead bodies inside. Four minutes before, the victims were seen boarding at the previous station. Eleven men butchered by hand in the blink of an eye. All are dead. And all are union.

Now, one man, Cyril Hayes, must fix this. There is a dark secret behind the inventions of McNaughton and with a war brewing between the executives and the workers, the truth must be discovered before the whole city burns. Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, Hayes must uncover the mystery before it kills him.

Others have clearly caught on to Robert Jackson Bennett long before me — he’s been awarded an Edgar, the Shirley Jackson, and the Philip K. Dick Citation of Excellence. The Company Man was published in April 2011 by Orbit Books. It is 466 pages, priced at $13.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version.

Blogging Sax Rohmer… In the Beginning, Part Three

Blogging Sax Rohmer… In the Beginning, Part Three

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illo-Sax Rohmerrohmer2“The M’Villin” was first published in Pearson’s Magazine in December 1906. Rohmer was still writing stories under the modified version of his real name, A. Sarsfield Ward. The story represented a quantum leap forward in the quality of Rohmer’s fiction and shows the influence of Alexandre Dumas’s swashbucklers.

Dumas remained a surprising influence on the author who still turned out the odd swashbuckler as late as the 1950s. It should also be noted that the character of Lola Dumas in President Fu Manchu (1936) is said to be a descendant of the famous author, while The Crime Magnet stories Rohmer penned in the 1930s and 1940s feature Major de Treville, a character whose surname suggests he is a descendant of the commander of the Musketeers from Dumas’s D’artagnan Romances.

Colonel Fergus M’Villin may be oddly named, but he makes for a fascinating character. An expert swordsman and fencing master, he is also a bit of a cad. The story of how he comes to avenge the honor of the man he previously slew in an earlier duel maintains the breezy good humor and spirit of adventure that colors The Three Musketeers in its earlier chapters. Rohmer thought well enough of the character to have penned a sequel, “The Ebony Casket,” but it was never published. The manuscript survived up until the year 2000, when it was junked in Tokyo by a family who did not imagine its worth to collectors.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of Murray Leinster, edited by Brian Davis

Vintage Treasures: The Best of Murray Leinster, edited by Brian Davis

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The Best of Murray Leinster UK-smallHere’s a vintage curiosity for you.

Last June, I wrote a blog article on The Best of Murray Leinster, volume 14 in Lester Del Rey’s famous Classics of Science Fiction line. It’s one of my favorite titles in a series filled with great books.

Then earlier this year, I stumbled across the UK version of The Best of Murray Leinster for sale on eBay, with a gloriously pulpy cover by Peter A. Jones. I mean, just look at that thing (at left, click for bigger version.) Any time a guy with a 6-inch knife takes on a monster bigger than a Winnebago, you’ve got my attention. Especially when it involves that much purple.

Of course I wanted it. But it was expensive — $16.99, including shipping — and I couldn’t really justify it. (But believe me, I was sooooo close.) Besides, there seemed to be errors in the listing. The book was edited by J.J. Pierce, not Brian Davis. Also, it was first published in 1978, not 1976 as the listing claimed. Unless there were two books with the title The Best of Murray Leinster which, ha ha, would pretty ridiculous.

Turns out publishing is a pretty funny industry. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, there are two books titled The Best of Murray Leinster. The first, subtitled A Memorial Anthology Selected by Brian Davis, was published in paperback in the UK by Corgi in 1976, the year after Leinster’s death. The US edition, from Del Rey, didn’t arrive until two years later.

Well, that’s all the excuse I needed to order the UK version. It arrived a few weeks later, and I was delighted to discover that it’s a completely different book, with only three stories in common with its American cousin: “The Ethical Equations,” “Symbiosis,” and “Pipeline to Pluto.” The remaining seven include some of Leinster’s more entertaining short stories, which were somehow left out of the US edition — such as “Sam, This Is You” and “If You Was a Moklin.”

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Announcing the Winners of Free Copies of The Ultra Thin Man and Echopraxia

Announcing the Winners of Free Copies of The Ultra Thin Man and Echopraxia

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The Ultra Thin Man-smallLast month, we told you that you had a chance to win two new novels from Tor: Patrick Swenson’s The Ultra Thin Man, and Peter Watts’s Echopraxia. How did you enter? Just by sending us a one-sentence review of your favorite Tor fantasy or science fiction novel. Easy as that! One winner for each book was drawn at random from all qualifying entries.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of The Ultra Thin Man is Guillermo Cantu, who reviewed a fantasy classic by Glen Cook:

The Black Company is the gritty tale of a band of crafty mercenaries that get entangled in a war of ancient and wicked sorcerers against questionable rebels, as told by the sarcastic company analyst, from the trenches.

And the winner of Echopraxia is Lee Hunter, with this one-sentence review of his favorite Tor science fiction title:

David Weber’s Off Armageddon Reef is an original story about fighting in the face of overwhelming, impossible odds; and the innate human will to survive and overcome an enemy.

The Ultra Thin Man was published by Tor Books on August 12, 2014. It is 334 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Victor Mosquera. Echopraxia was released on August 26, 2014 by Tor Books. It is 383 pages, priced at $24.99 for the hardcover and $11.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Richard Anderson.

Thanks to all those who entered our contest and thanks again to Tor for making it all possible!

Future Treasures: The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures edited by Sean Wallace

Future Treasures: The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures edited by Sean Wallace

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The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures-smallLast January, we told you about Sean Wallace’s intriguing anthology The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, a generous collection of short fiction from Amal El-Mohtar, Barth Anderson, Jeffrey Ford, James Morrow, Mary Robinette Kowal, Aliette de Bodard, N.K. Jemisin, and many others.

The book was a solid success and no publisher can resist success. So it should be no surprise that the sequel, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures, is scheduled to arrive next month here in the US (it’s already on sale in the UK).

This volume collects over 30 steampunk tales, including three originals from Benjanun Sriduangkaew, E. Catherine Tobler, and Jonathan Wood. Other contributors include K.W. Jeter, Tobias S. Buckell, Cherie Priest, Jay Lake, Christopher Barzak, Carrie Vaughn, Chris Roberson, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Tony Pi, Aliette de Bodard, Nisi Shawl, Genevieve Valentine, Sofia Samatar, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Cat Rambo, Margaret Ronald, Ken Liu, and many others.

Our very own C.S.E. Cooney contributes a reprint, her marvelous tale “Canary of Candletown,” from Steam-Powered II. Ann VanderMeer provides the introduction.

Sean Wallace is also the editor of the upcoming The Mammoth Book of Warriors and Wizardry, a very promising sword & sorcery collection with a story reprinted from Black Gate (Matthew David Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael”), as well as contributions from James Enge, Chris Willrich, Aliette de Bodard, Mary Robinette Kowal, N.K. Jemisin, Saladin Ahmed, and many others.

I’m a big fan of these Mammoth anthologies. They’re attractive, well edited, and a great value for the money. Keep your eye out for this one.

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Living Outside Society’s Rules: Blackguards

Living Outside Society’s Rules: Blackguards

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Blackguards_front-coverI’m pleased today to feature a guest post from writer Laura Resnick, all about an upcoming anthology, one that’s already received a lot of funding from Kickstarter. Take it away, Laura:

Back before I ever started writing or had any intention of becoming a writer, I read an interview with an author who, when asked if her dark, challenging characters were also the sort of people she was drawn to in her real life, said of course not — who could actually live with someone like that? She said she preferred stable, even-tempered, good-natured people in her real life (as I do, too). But fiction is about conflict; it’s about things breaking down, imploding, exploding, escalating, and reaching a crisis point — not about things humming along smoothly and contentedly (which tends to be what most of us want from real life most of the time).

We read fantasy novels about Good and Evil doing battle with each other, not about Good and Evil agreeing to sit down together and work out a reasonable compromise as calmly as possible.

Similarly, there is a longtime and widespread fascination in fiction with living outside the rules of society. Many people fantasize at various points about the satisfaction, excitement, or pleasure of simply doing whatever they want — stealing a boat, robbing a bank, killing their boss, seducing total strangers, breaking into the Vatican, etc. But few people are so committed to those fantasies that they want to risk losing their homes, their livelihoods, their families, their future, and their freedom in order to fulfill them. There’s also the problem of conscience; most of us would feel cripplingly terrible about murdering someone or taking possessions we have no right to take.

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Ten Acclaimed Historical Fantasy Novels You Need to Read

Ten Acclaimed Historical Fantasy Novels You Need to Read

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The Girls at the Kingfisher Club Genevieve Valentine-smallIf there’s something we’re consistently good at here at Black Gate, it’s jumping on a trend late. What can I tell you? We’re too busy reading to be hip. On laundry day, I still wear bell bottoms.

But there are some trends so obvious that even we notice. Social media? It’s starting to catch on — take our word for it. Superhero movies? They’re going to be popular. Believe it.

Most recently, I’ve noticed that the emerging trend in fantasy — the one attracting the hottest writers in the field — seems to be historical fantasy. Mary Robinette Kowal, Genevieve Valentine, Patty Templeton, Catherynne Valente, and many others have penned some really terrific historical fantasies recently… and more are arriving every week.

Not convinced? Have a look at the following list of 10 recent, and highly acclaimed, historical fantasy novels, written by a Who’s Who of emerging fantasy writers.

If you’re like most readers, you’ll find more than a few you haven’t read. Do yourself a favor and check out one or two that sound interesting.

Trust us; you’ll be glad you did.

1. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine

The fairytale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses , set in Jazz Age Manhattan.

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New Treasures: Sword & Mythos, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles

New Treasures: Sword & Mythos, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles

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Sword and Mythos-smallInnsmouth Free Press has done some really terrific work recently, including the groundbreaking anthologies Future Lovecraft (2011) and Historical Lovecraft (2011), and the splendid Innsmouth Magazine (which we discussed here).

The Editor-in-Chief of Innsmouth Free Press, Paula R. Stiles, may be familiar to Black Gate readers as the author of the dark fantasy featuring the Queen of Hell, “Roundelay,” in Black Gate 15. With her latest anthology, Sword & Mythos, Stiles and her co-editor Silvia Moreno-Garcia have assembled another dynamite collection of stories, this one featuring sword & sorcery heroes and heroines coming face-to-face with monstrosities out of the Cthulhu Mythos.

The Blades of Heroes Clash Against the Darkest Sorcery

Aztec warriors ready for battle, intent on conquering a neighboring tribe, but different gods protect the Matlazinca. For Arthur Pendragon, the dream of Camelot has ended. What remains is a nightmarish battle against his own son, who is not quite human.

Master Yue, the great swordsman, sets off to discover what happened to a hamlet that was mysteriously abandoned. He finds evil. Sunsorrow, the ancient dreaming sword, pried from the heart of the glass god, yearns for Carcosa.

Fifteen writers, drawing inspiration from the pulp sub-genres of sword and sorcery and the Cthulhu Mythos, seed stories of adventure, of darkness, of magic and monstrosities. From Africa to realms of neverwhere, here is heroic fantasy with a twist.

Sword & Mythos was published by Innsmouth Free Press on May 1, 2014. It is 315 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $5 for the digital edition. The cover is by Nacho Molina Parra. Order a copy or get more details at the Innsmouth Free Press website.